Happy weekend! There’s something for everyone at the movies this week, from Jessica Chastain’s horror comeback, Other Mommy, to Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning.
If you prefer to keep your movie-watching at home, we’ve got plenty of options too, mostly on VOD. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is finally available to purchase digitally, bringing the biggest movie event of the year to your living room.
Horror fans have plenty to look forward to. Insidious: Out of the Further, the sixth installment in the franchise, is now on VOD, adding a new wrinkle to the tales of the Further, the demons that linger there, and the unlucky people with the ability to access that realm. There’s also plenty of horror action, including Onslaught, a comeback of sorts for Adam Wingard, and Colony, a terrifying South Korean movie following a group of people trapped in a quarantined building crawling with zombies.
When it comes to streaming, Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg’s return to the alien and sci-fi genre, is now on Peacock. Don’t Look Back in Anger, perhaps the biggest music documentary in recent memory, is also streaming, following the much-awaited reunion between brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher. Happy watching.
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Spider-Man: Brand New Day
- Available on VOD
- Genre: Action
- Run time: 2h 25m
- Director: Destin Daniel Cretton
- Cast: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink
Spider-Man: Brand New Day remains the highest-grossing movie of the year. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the movie feels like a return to the Spider-Man movies that many of us grew up loving, following a lonely Peter Parker (Tom Holland) as he fumbles his way through young adulthood in New York. The story finds him reconnecting with his high school friends and meeting some new foes, all while establishing the next steps for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While many of the franchise’s superheroes’ fates remain in the balance, Spider-Man proves time and time again that he’s doing just fine.
According to our Polygon review:
Peter Parker’s physical changes aren’t quite as central to the plot as some early trailers suggested, but they still do play a pivotal role in the movie. Most importantly, they let Holland level up his version of Spider-Man with natural webbing and enhanced senses. Cretton leans into these new elements by borrowing liberally from the Sam Raimi movies, both in the way he depicts Peter discovering his new powers like a boy going through adolescence (with some light body horror vibes) and through a well-placed slow-motion sequence that’s nearly identical to the one where Tobey Maguire fights Joe Manganiello in Spider-Man (2002).
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Insidious: Out of the Further
- Available on VOD
- Genre: Horror
- Run time: 1h 46m
- Director: Jacob Chase
- Cast: Amelia Eve, Lin Shaye, Brandon Perea
Insidious: Out of the Further marks a new story within the universe of Insidious, following a new family and a new terrifying demon. Gemma (Amelia Eve) had a traumatic childhood, with a mother who was absent and left her daughter to fend for herself. As an adult, Gemma is committed to giving her daughter the childhood she never had. But when some scary neighbors move next door, Gemma begins having nightmares that take her back to her childhood, and realizes that the places she visits in her dreams might be more real than she thinks.
According to our Polygon review:
Insidious: Out of the Further features numerous scary beats that are inventive and fun. Gemma is a dentist in a horror movie for a reason; Chase dives fully into dental horror and the squeamishness of having someone poke around in your mouth with metal tools. Dental drills and mouth blocks show up in the demons’ designs. There’s also a memorable sequence set within a pillow fort that starts out playful and grows into a labyrinthine escape, striking the right balance between jumpy and claustrophobic.
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Disclosure Day
- Available on Peacock
- Genre: Sci-fi
- Run time: 2h 25m
- Director: Steven Spielberg
- Cast: Josh O’Connor, Emily Blunt, Colin Firth
Disclosure Day is now on streaming. The film marks the return of Steven Spielberg to the aliens genre, one he helped create. The story follows a whistleblower (Josh O’Connor) and a meteorologist (Emily Blunt) who band together to uncover a conspiracy and prove to the world that aliens are real.
Per our Polygon review:
Disclosure Day isn’t just a Steven Spielberg movie — it’s that kind of Spielberg movie. Heading into it, I personally was expecting a War of the Worlds-type feel. I really like that movie, but it’s more of a straightforward action-thriller, without the idealistic elements seen in works like E.T. Instead, Disclosure Day not only hooked me with its thriller aspect, but it made me feel a bit more sentimental as well, like the Spielberg movies I watched when I was a kid.
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Onslaught
- Available on VOD
- Genre: Action/horror
- Run time: 1h 32m
- Director: Adam Wingard
- Cast: Adria Arjona, Alex Pereira, Drew Starkey
Adam Wingard began his career with fun and gory horror movies, from You’re Next to The Guest. He then took a long detour, signing on to the Godzilla v Kong franchise. Onslaught finds him in what feels like his comfort zone, trailing an army vet who’s unexpectedly charged with caring for her daughter, as a trio of supersoldiers descend on her trailer park neighborhood, forcing her to band with her neighbors and rely on her military training if they hope to survive the night.
Per our Polygon review:
Onslaught is Imperial Boomerang theory made cinema and then filtered through the dark camera lens of sci-fi horror master John Carpenter (with a sprinkle of James Cameron’s Terminator franchise and a healthy splash of Kill Bill’s bright-red blood). Wingard and his longtime screenwriting collaborator Simon Barrett open on Arjona alone in the desert shooting pumpkins with her sniper rifle. In just a few seconds, Wingard unsubtly announces the various genres and tropes to expect: horror, guns, violence, and Adria Arjona.
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Colony
- Available on VOD
- Genre: Horror
- Run time: 2h 2m
- Director: Yeon Sang-ho
- Cast: Ji Chang-wook, Shin Hyun-been, Jun ji-hyun
Yeon Sang-ho knows his zombies. The director of Train to Busan is back with another zombie story. Colony follows a group of unlucky people attending a major biotech conference. When one mad scientist injects himself with a fast-acting pathogen, he sparks a biological outbreak that infects people fast, triggering violent and bloodthirsty behavior.
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Animals
- Available on Netflix
- Genre: Thriller
- Run time: 1h 46m
- Director: Ben Affleck
- Cast: Ben Affleck, Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson
Ben Affleck has taken an interesting pivot into Netflix filmmaking. His most recent project is Animals, which he stars in and directs; it follows him as a Los Angeles mayoral candidate whose marriage is pushed to its limits after his son gets kidnapped. As the two struggle to collect funds for the ransom, they risk revealing secrets that could destroy their lives.
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Matchbox: The Movie
- Available on Apple TV
- Genre: Action
- Run time: 2h 6m
- Director: Sam Hargrave
- Cast: John Cena, Jessica Biel, Arturo Castro
Based on the famous brand of toy cars, Matchbox follows Sean Walker (John Cena), a CIA agent who reunites with his childhood friends for a night out drinking. They wake up drugged and in a cargo jet, framed for stealing a nuclear bomb. To clear their names, Sean must lead his civilian friends on a mission to different countries as they try to clear their names and catch the people responsible. Cue the car chases.
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Don’t Look Back in Anger
- Available on Disney+
- Genre: Documentary
- Run time: 2h 3m
- Director: Will Lovelace, Dylan Southern
- Cast: Noel Gallagher, Liam Gallagher
Oasis’ reunion was a global cultural event. The Gallagher brothers reunited for the first time in 15 years and took their band on tour through different continents. Apart from featuring emotional moments between them, the documentary is also a love letter to fans, with many growing up loving Oasis and sharing their love of the music with their children.
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Late Fame
- Available on VOD
- Genre: Comedy-drama
- Run time: 1h 36m
- Director: Kent Jones
- Cast: Willem Dafoe, Greta Lee, Edmund Donovan
Late Fame features Willem Dafoe as a man who works in the post office and once published a book of poetry. His passion gets reignited when he meets a group of young creatives who’ve discovered his book and believe him to be an undiscovered genius.
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V/H/S Mixtape
- Available on Shudder
- Genre: Horror
- Run time: 1h 38m
- Director: RZA, Flying Lotus, Tobias Forge
- Cast: GWAR, Alex Hsu, Barbara Crampton
The found footage horror franchise is back with a new entry, this time, music-themed. V/H/S Mixtape is made up of numerous shorts directed by various filmmakers, exploring the dark side of the music industry. Directors and performers include musicians and filmmakers like RZA, Flying Lotus, the heavy metal band GWAR, and more.
